“When does this stop?” Harold asked out loud. He hadn’t remembered deciding to speak, and yet there it was. The words had already been loosed.

“What do you mean?” asked Sarah. She plopped the book in her hands down on a pile and crossed her legs in front of her.

He wasn’t sure how to have this conversation. And he certainly didn’t want to. But he’d started it, improbably, and he knew of no conversational exit.

“Well… when does the investigation stop? What are we even looking for now? It’s funny about detective work. It’s like it becomes its own self-justifying, self-sustaining machine. You find a clue, you deduce an explanation for something or other, and then you follow that to the next one. And then the next one. And maybe we’re making progress somewhere, or maybe being a detective is like being trapped inside a perpetual-motion machine. There’s always more to analyze. There’s always more to find. We can start analyzing our own analysis. We could run on our own fumes forever!”

Sarah responded with a curious look. “I appreciate that you’re feeling very philosophical about this,” she said gingerly. “But I’m not sure what you mean.”

“What did we set out to do? We wanted to figure out who killed Alex Cale. And we wanted to recover the diary. Well, we know who killed Alex Cale. And we know that the diary can’t be recovered, because it was never found in the first place.”

“We don’t know why Cale did it.”

“But does it matter? Do the why’s matter if we already know the what’s?”

Sarah paused, trying to read Harold’s face. He was getting at something, certainly, but neither of them was sure what it was.

“What are you saying, Harold? Do you want to go home?”

“No,” he said. “But why are you still here?”

“Why am I still here?” Sarah looked confused by the question.

“I can tell you why I’m still here. Because Alex Cale killed himself in order to leave me a message. But why are you still here?” For me, thought Harold. Say that you’re here for me.

Sarah looked him coolly in the eyes. “For the diary,” she said. “I’m here to find the diary. That’s my story.”

Harold returned her stare and tried to match her expressionless look. He was sure he failed. She must be able to see the sadness he was holding back.

“Alex never found the diary,” he said. He did a very good job of minimizing the quivering in his voice.

“No. But you can.”

“What’re the books you’ve got there?” he said, gesturing to a pile beside her as if nothing had passed between them.

“Some history,” she said. “And poetry. German, Roman.”

“Wait. Is the poetry Roman, or is that the history?”

“Umm…” She pulled an old, heavy hardback from the pile. It didn’t have a glossy sleeve, just a bruised and black cardboard cover. “The Poetry of Catullus. He was Roman, right?”

Harold laughed. “Yeah. And I’ll bet there’s a military history in there as well-something called The Holy War?”

Surprised at Harold’s specificity, Sarah looked down at her pile. In a moment she removed another hard-backed book.

“Yes,” she said. “How did you know this was here?”

“Open the book.”

She did, then looked up at Harold in shock. “The pages are empty!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah. It’s a fake. Just a little joke on Cale’s part. When Sherlock Holmes came back to life, after the Great Hiatus, he reappeared to Watson disguised as an elderly bookseller. He carried three books with him, which he gave to his unsuspecting friend as a gift. The books were a collection of Catullus’s poetry, plus something called The Holy War, which so far as we can tell wasn’t even a real book, and a nature guide called British Birds. I’m sure you’ll find that last one in there, too.” Sarah began to look through the books in her pile, in search of British Birds. “The Catullus part has always been a curious point for Sherlockians. He was one of the most openly sexual of the Roman poets, in both hetero- and homo- varieties. It’s a funny thing to give to your best friend after a long absence.”

Sarah completed her search of the books beside her and turned to Harold empty handed.

“There’s nothing here called British Birds,” she said.

“I’m sure it’s there somewhere.”

Harold joined her on the floor, and together they went through the pile again. Nothing.

So they searched the entire flat. They roamed the floor on hands and knees, picking up every book they found along the way. At first Harold took the south end and Sarah took the north, but when they still couldn’t find the book, they traded and re-searched each other’s section. Again, nothing.

“It’s not here,” said Sarah finally.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Harold. “There’s no way Alex Cale would have had only two books of this little Sherlockian trilogy. Someone as obsessive as he was? Of course he’d have a copy.”

“So the Goateed Man stole it,” said Sarah.

Harold thought about this. “Maybe,” he said. “It’s possible. But why would he think there was anything special about that book? And if he did know there was something special about it, then why did he turn the whole apartment upside down?”

“That’s a good point.”

“And if the Goateed Man didn’t steal it…” concluded Harold. “Well… if he didn’t steal it, then it was never here. And Alex Cale was trying to send us another message.”

CHAPTER 31 Introducing Mr. Edward Henry

November 13, 1900, cont.

Arthur had quite a bit of explaining to do. This he attempted during the brief ride to Clerkenwell aboard the Scotland Yard carriage. He and Inspector Miller traveled quickly, and so Arthur spoke more quickly still. By the time their carriage, a broad four-wheeler, had pulled in front of Emily Davison’s lodgings, Arthur had given Inspector Miller a more or less satisfactory summary of his investigations.

Emily Davison’s flat was swarming with police. A dozen bobbies milled about the drawing room as they performed a variety of odd tasks. Two poured charcoal powder over every available surface, the lumps of black soot giving the room the appearance of a long-sinceerupted volcano. The men pressed clear glass onto the powder lumps and then pulled the glass up into the light. They gazed intently at the kaleidoscopic images produced by the powder on the glass, and then, seemingly unhappy with their results, they pressed the glass down again to create another image. Another group of investigators hovered in a circle over something on the floor. With their hands full of odd devices, they took turns kneeling down and applying their tools to whatever lay there. As Arthur stepped farther into the drawing room, he could see a pair of stockinged legs on the floor, at the center of the group. Then he could make out a black frock above the legs, torn and folded at a strange angle. This must be the body of Emily Davison, Arthur realized. Through the crush of hovering detectives, Arthur saw one man kneeling beside it. He held a long steel rod, which was curved in the shape of a half-moon. In the center of the rod stood a hinge, which allowed the man to open and close the half-moon shape as if it were the jaws of an animal. He placed the device around Emily’s skull and gazed at some sort of scale at the top of the instrument. The kneeling constable barked a series of numbers at the standing ones, who replied by barking the numbers right back at him for confirmation. Arthur realized that the man was measuring the diameter of her cranium.